by Frank Borsch
"You could have set off an explosion!"
"But I didn't, did I?"
"No, but who knows what you destroyed! Maybe the only clue that could have given us information on the origin of this wreck. Why didn't you wait until—"
"Why, why, why?" Sharita mocked.
Because you make me nervous, Immortal! she thought. Because I feel you watching every step I take! Because I've got this crazy fear that you're comparing me to every commander you've ever flown with, and you're writing me off as an amateur. That's why.
"Because I'm not some goddamned archaeologist. I'm just the commander of a prospecting ship," she said aloud. "Do you understand what that means? I don't have a flock of robots and scientists at my side giving me advice and getting their hands dirty for me and planning and documenting everything step by step. I don't have a fleet I can just call, and half an hour later a squadron of battleships filled with trained specialists will come flying up. I've only got this"—she tapped the side of her head—"and this!" She tapped the grip of her beamer. "And do you know what? They've never let me down."
Giving Rhodan no chance to answer, Sharita set her left foot on a projecting strut, tested her weight on it and then climbed inside the wreck. Darkness enveloped her. She switched on her picosyn and used it as a makeshift flashlight. Rhodan, who had followed her without a word, was forced to rely on her for illumination: as a passenger on the Palenque, he had not been issued a picosyn for his own use, let alone a weapon. Sharita felt fiercely glad that he was dependent on her for as long as they were inside the wreck.
A landscape of ice awaited them, as if they were inside a cave. Sharita's breath came out in clouds of vapor. The crackling, clicking noises of warming metal now surrounded them.
The air temperature had to be well below zero. Sharita shivered, the uniform jacket in which she had been sweating all day now proving to be little protection against the cold. It had to be worse for Rhodan, who was wearing lightweight, casual clothes.
"Let's not waste time." Feeling slightly guilty for her petty anger at Rhodan, she was now determined to keep him from freezing. Her light provided enough illumination to search each room. The barrel of her beamer followed the light.
"Are you afraid that space monsters might be hiding in here, just waiting to pounce and eat us?" Rhodan asked.
Sharita ignored his remark. She felt safer with the beamer in her hand. That was what counted, not what Rhodan thought about it.
Sharita estimated that the ceiling was about ten or fifteen meters above them and was the inner surface of the exterior hull. They were in a large cargo hold or hangar.
What was it used to transport?
To their left and right, a ledge about a meter high ran along the walls that corresponded to the outer hull. A bench for passengers? Possibly. That would mean the wreck was a spacecraft designed for short flights, probably a shuttle. In that case, the wide, empty interior hold would be for planetary-surface vehicles or equipment containers.
But if the wreck really was part of a short-distance shuttle, Sharita asked herself, what was it doing in the Ochent Nebula, far from all galactic civilization? And racing along at near light-speed, to boot?
She and Rhodan reached the end of the hangar. Before them rose a wall that spanned the ship's entire width. The layer of ice hid from their view the hatch that must connect the cargo hold with the shuttle's bow.
Sharita extended her little finger on the hand holding the beamer and tapped the picosyn on the other wrist. A series of diagrams and schematics flashed rapidly across the tiny screen.
She gave a grunt of satisfaction, then aimed her beamer at a point about three meters to the right of where she stood. A wide green beam of energy melted several square meters of ice. When the steam dispersed and condensed somewhere else, Sharita could see a discolored metal surface.
No wonder, she thought. The builders of this shuttle never dreamed that its interior would be exposed to temperatures near absolute zero. The materials weren't up to the strain.
"Aha! There's our hatch!"
A rectangle of straight lines had appeared on the wall, wide enough to allow two people to walk through simultaneously.
Sharita fired her beamer.
"No!" Rhodan exclaimed, but it was too late. The disintegrator ray traced the outline of the hatch. The metal didn't offer any significant resistance. Where it was touched by the beam, it dissolved into greenish gas. Along the outline of the hatch the metal suddenly turned black.
A few moments later, deprived of its support, the hatch tipped forward, falling with an echoing impact that must have been heard in the Palenque's control center.
"Now what's bothering you? I suppose I should have waited for a team of specialists to carefully open the hatch so I wouldn't destroy anything valuable?"
"Yes, and—"
"I don't know what's eating you," she interrupted. "Even they couldn't have managed a better cutting job, right?"
"Hardly."
"So what's the problem?"
"I think I saw lettering. Left of the hatch at eye level."
"Intercosmo, maybe? 'Please don't shoot—the key is under the mat!'"
Rhodan didn't answer her sarcasm. "No, not Intercosmo. But a language that seemed familiar to me."
Well, crap. I really messed up that one. If I keep going like this, I'm likely to blow up the whole Palenque out of pure nervousness.
"There's no reason to get excited," she said, trying to downplay her mistake. "That can't have been the only lettering in this entire thing."
Rhodan nodded absently. His thoughts were clearly somewhere else.
Another icescape awaited them beyond the hatchway, though on a much smaller scale. They found themselves in a narrow corridor from which other passageways branched off, lined with doors instead of hatches. Sharita decided that they had penetrated the crew quarters. The engine must have been in the stern section, which had collided with the crawler.
For the next few minutes, they traveled through the corridors and climbed up several decks using primitive ladders. The ladders were installed in square shafts and their rungs studded all four walls.
"No antigravity," Rhodan remarked. "I believe this craft is designed for spaceflight without artificial gravity. In weightlessness, you move by pushing off from the rungs and then grabbing on to them again. In acceleration phases or in planetary gravitational fields, they're used like conventional ladders. Primitive, but absolutely maintenance-free."
Sharita hardly noticed her surroundings. Her left-hand little finger—she wasn't letting go of the beamer in her right hand—raced over her picosyn as she called up data, took measurements and ran scans. She stopped rather suddenly.
"Got something?" Rhodan asked.
"Um ... " Sharita tapped the display again. "There is something that stands out."
"Yes?"
"Over there." She pointed to a section of the wall several meters further on. "It's too warm. It's much too warm behind that."
Sharita was so fascinated by her armband's readings that for a moment she even forgot her resentful feeling of being on trial.
"What's the temperature?"
"Minus one point three centigrade—which means fourteen point eight degrees warmer than in here."
"Energy emissions?"
"None. There aren't any energy-generating devices in this part of the wreck. If there even were any emergency systems, they haven't worked for a very long time."
"So the reading must be an error."
"I ran the picosyn's self-diagnostic. The armband is in perfect working order."
They exchanged glances.
"Let's take a look."
Sharita aimed her beamer at the section of the wall where the heat source registered. The disintegration ray made slow progress cutting through the barely visible hatch.
"This hatch is a lot thicker than the first one," she called over the hissing of the melting metal.
"Maybe it's a rescue pod that's d
esigned to be ejected in an emergency."
Sharita's beamer continued to burn through the wall. The loosened hatch fell away, and Sharita stepped first through the opening, her beamer held ready.
She found herself in a tiny room, this one somehow free of the ice that coated the rest of the wreck. In the weak light beam from her armband, Sharita could see several contour seats anchored to the floor, and in front of them instrument panels and dark, dead screens. At the other end of the room, she saw an opening that led into a kind of cockpit. And in front of that opening, on the floor—
"A body!"
Venron hears a noise. A crash that reminds him he is still alive; the cold has not eaten him. Not yet.
Sharita's light hovered on a human form. The body had drawn itself up into the fetal position, with its back turned toward them. One arm was outstretched, as though the being had been trying to reach something. The body was dressed in lightweight trousers and a shirt that appeared colorless and faded.
Light. Not the light of the stars. This is softer. Venron tries to open eyelids that are frozen together. He manages only a narrow crack. The colors do not seem right. It is as though the cold has frozen even them. He sees the dully colored floor of the shuttle. And an arm. A long moment passes before he recognizes the emaciated limb as his own arm. He had stretched it out. He had thought he could touch her. Grasp her with his hand and cling to her. Who? he wonders. He has forgotten.
"That ... that ... "
Sharita's mind told her to run to the figure on the floor, to help him or her, but her body didn't obey. It was as if her body had frozen at the moment of the discovery. She felt ashamed. How could she have been playing games with Rhodan to save her pride when someone lay here dying?
Rhodan pushed past her in one stride and knelt down next to the prone form.
A blur. A voice. It whispers something. Venron does not understand what it says, but that does not matter. It sounds soothing, sincere.
Rhodan carefully took the body by the shoulders and turned it on its back. It yielded only reluctantly, twisting strangely, as though every bit of flexibility that was natural to the human form was gone.
It was a man.
A man. Venron sees him from large, sad eyes. The man's mouth moves unceasingly, whispering a message he cannot understand. Venron wants to say something. But he cannot. His mouth will not obey him. The man in front of him dissolves into a blur.
Sharita and Rhodan looked at the unshaven face. The eyes lay deep in their sockets, the cheeks were sunken. The man's brown skin was waxy, and had a bluish tint. Rhodan slipped one hand behind the man's head, and with the other opened the magnetic fastenings of his jacket and wriggled out of the sleeve. He switched hands behind the man's head and shrugged his arm out of the other sleeve, then bunched the jacket up into a provisional pillow and rested the man's head on it.
A warm hand. It feels good to be touched. This touch reminds Venron of ... Denetree. That was who he was reaching out for. He had seen her among the whirling stars. His sister would never abandon him. The shape above him flows into a new form and takes on solid outlines again. Venron sees his sister bending over him. She smiles.
"Is ... is he still alive?" Sharita asked. She couldn't shake off her stiffness. Her beamer was aimed at Rhodan and the man. It was completely inappropriate and unnecessary, but she couldn't help it. The fingers of her right hand clutched the pistol grip with the intensity of a drowning man holding a life-saving tree limb.
A second voice. A woman. Venron tries to turn his head. He wants to see her.
"Yes." Rhodan glanced up at Sharita and looked pointedly at the beamer. "Put that thing away. The poor fellow certainly can't hurt us."
"Oh ... sure." Sharita deserved the reprimand. But her fingers didn't obey. She had to use her left hand to unbend the obstinate fingers of her right.
Rhodan turned back to the man. "Don't be afraid. It'll be all right. We'll help you. It'll be all right ... "
The man's voice supports Venron. It is all that keeps him from falling into the abyss from which there is no return. The man will not hurt him.
While he spoke, Rhodan held the back of his hand to the man's mouth and nose. He felt a faint movement of air. The man was still breathing. Rhodan took the man's hand and felt for his pulse.
"The pulse is weak," he said, "but stable."
Did he succeed? Had he found the stars? And with them friends, not enemies, like he had been taught all his life?
"What's wrong with him?" Sharita had managed to kneel down next to the man. Her right hand still would not release her weapon, but she had at least succeeded in lowering her arm. The beamer's barrel pointed to the floor.
Again the woman's voice. Venron wants to see her. He exerts all of his remaining strength to turn his head. Reluctantly his chilled, atrophied muscles respond. The man's whispering gives him strength.
Rhodan shrugged. "Hunger. Thirst. Freezing cold. All I really know for sure is that if he doesn't get medical attention in a few minutes, he'll be dead. When we burned a huge hole into this compartment we removed his protection from the cold, and the temperature is sinking fast. I doubt he has the reserves to resist the sudden drop in temperature."
Sharita nodded slowly. A part of her was screaming in her head, trying to shake her awake.
"Sharita!"
A cry. Sharp. Cutting.
Sharita couldn't move.
"Sharita!" Rhodan exclaimed. "You have the armband—call for help now!"
A shout. What is going on? The security he was feeling begins to fade away.
With a mighty mental effort, Sharita pulled herself together. The beamer slid from her hand and fell to the floor with a rattle. She had done it! She hit her armband with her fist. "Pearl!"
Venron completes the movement and sees the shadowy form of the woman. Now she is shouting, too.
"What is it, Sharita?" the response came, long seconds later.
He opens his eyelids just a crack further. Slowly, very slowly, the outline sharpens.
"We need help immediately! Send the Doc and his medbots down to the hangar!"
Then he sees it: a uniform! Black as night on board the Ship.
The man shuddered. He gasped.
He is back. They have brought him back.
"On the way," Pearl Laneaux announced. "What's going on? Is something wrong with Rhodan?"
They will torture him. Execute him. They will extract everything he knows ... .
"No, we have ... "
No!
The man jerked upright, staring at Rhodan from wide-open eyes.
The man. His whispers were a lie!
Rhodan took hold of his shoulders to press him back down to the floor. "Don't be afraid. We are friends. Lie down. Everything will be all—"
Lies, all lies! He wanted to leave them behind him forever!
The man threw himself to the side, away from Rhodan. He grabbed the beamer that had fallen to the floor.
He does not want to hear any more lies. No more, not ever again!
The man aimed and fired.
Venron sees the beam that frees him from all care ... and turns his head into a cloud of plasma.
7
The night was her enemy.
Denetree gasped for breath as she pedaled. She rode in the highest gear, and had switched on the battery that she had planned to turn over to her Metach'ton in a few days. Such a waste, since she had spent weeks charging it on her daily rides. If she had charged it the final three percent, she could have given the Ship a full battery and received extra food rations for a week. She could have avoided the communal kitchen and cooked and eaten her extra rations alone.
Alone with Venron.
But all that was over. Venron was dead. She spelled it out in time with her pumping legs. D-E-A-D. Denetree kept viewing the scene of the shuttle blasting out of the ship over and over in her mind, watching the Tenoy being sucked out into space. She had never before seen anyone die except for old people, whe
n it was time for them to step back and make room for the young. Accidents were practically unheard of. Over the course of centuries, work procedures and tools had been perfected for maximum safety. In order to maim or even kill oneself, it was necessary to possess a considerable amount of stupidity. Or intent. But again, only older people managed that. Not the ones who counted, the metach in Denetree's and Venron's age group.
The Ship took care of its own down to the smallest consideration. For example, balanced nutrition. Sustenance was ideally portioned, because to be overweight was waste and waste was a crime—treason to their mission. Over the following months, the Ship would have made up for the extra rations that she received in exchange for the battery by imperceptibly trimming her rations, or assigning her to the heaviest, most calorie-burning work.
Once or twice Denetree met other riders. She saw their lights approaching from a distance and forced herself to reduce her panic-driven speed to a normal rate, ignore the tempting paths in the fields on either side of the road, and greet the metach in a friendly and ordinary manner as they passed.
Denetree was lucky. She didn't encounter any Tenoy. No one stopped to ask her what she was doing on the Outer Deck in the middle of the night. Denetree suspected this was because the other bicyclists themselves were out with intentions contrary to the rules of the Ship. Meeting with Metachs from other Metach'ton for a night of passion, for example. The Ship did not approve of that. A metach's genes were too important to leave their recombination to the whims of chance, to say nothing of the fact that a lively night resulted in diminished work performance the next day. If the furtive lovers were caught by the Tenoy, they were punished with weeks or even months in one of the Metach'ton that the Tenoy watched most closely, and sometimes even permanent assignment to the Outer Deck. Another light approached Denetree. She slowed her speed, tried to suppress the hammering of her pulse, and greeted the other rider.
Soon she would be at the elevator.
The hunt had already begun: the Naahk's speech had made that clear. And Denetree knew the Tenoy would look first for the traitor's sister.